


i'm doin' this for the thrill of it, killin' it

by theamazingpeterparker



Series: king of new york [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artist Louis, Artist Zayn, Baker Harry, Existential Angst, Fluff, Graffiti, M/M, New York City, Rich Niall, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4441784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/pseuds/theamazingpeterparker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I’m not a cop,” Niall starts with, doesn’t really know why.<br/>The man’s eyes crinkle and when he tugs the bandana down he’s smiling. He’s handsome. “Cops don’t usually say hi when they’re coming to arrest me,” is all he says, tucks his face back into the bandana and waves a hand that Niall understands to mean step back. “Watch my back, yeah?”</i>
</p><p>Louis is a street artist who hates rich upper east siders. Niall is a rich upper east sider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm doin' this for the thrill of it, killin' it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fervent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent/gifts).



> can u believe we made it !! can you believe this really happened  
> i have wanted to try nouis out for a while and i finally DID IT and its THE LONGEST MESS IVE EVER WRITTEN ! this is a fic for [clare](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent) for all the times ive asked her to read my unfinished fics, wanted to give her a break and see if i could finish something for her, big thank you present kinda.  
> which brings me to owing my entire Life to annie and sharon for holding my hand and cheering me on !! Literally this would have been like. 2k of nothingness if yall werent so happy to help me, [annie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity) out here teachin me the nouis ropes, a tru hero & veteran, the best beta. and [sharon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/justaboat/pseuds/justaboat) for saying 'hey lets be friends!' and then promptly ruining my life. she cheered me on the whole frickin way, what a champ. thank you both so much for putting up with me thru this fic, i hope i don't let you down.  
> title is from Tennis Court by Lorde.
> 
> inspo and art references are in the notes at the end !

:::

There’s a spray-painted smiley face on the pavement behind Niall’s car. It’s small and black, two x’s for eyes and Niall probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been so close to his tires. He takes a picture of it, doesn’t remember if it was there the night before or if it’s new, but it’s kind of cool, anyway. He doesn’t see much graffiti on the upper east side.

:::

“You’ve got some kind of fucked-up bitterness about all this for no real reason,” Zayn mutters around a cigarette, and Louis pretends not to hear him. “You grew up in Princeton, for fucks' sake. There’s no reason to be doing this on a residential building, man.”

Louis makes a face and then stands up, turns to look at him. “I didn’t ask you to come with me here.”

Zayn leans back against the wall, holding his arms out in an innocent shrug. “And yet. Here I am.”

“Here you are,” Louis grunts, turning back to the wall and swiping a hand across his forehead. He’ll admit that this time he did bite off more than he could chew, and he _is_ grateful that Zayn’s here as a lookout. The last three times he tried anything this big on the upper east side ended in getting arrested or chased through Central Park, but he knows better this time. Picked a building that’s taller than most of the others, sent Zayn up through the janitor’s stairwell with the ladder and Louis met him up from the fire escape.

“Louis,” Zayn calls up to him once he’s already up on the ladder, shaking his can and giving it a preliminary spray against the brick wall. “Lou, there’s some dude on his balcony across the street.”

“I don’t care.”

:::

Niall thinks the two figures are custodial staff, at first, one of them carrying a ladder and a bag and the other waving a hand around, pointing to the wall that extends up from the last story of the apartment building’s roof. And then a flashlight flicks on, wavers around the rooftop for a few moments before one of the men scales the ladder, shaking something in his fist.

He could -- _should_ call the cops, when the man starts spraying paint in big, sharp arcs, a massive white _D-O-N_ and then he has to get down, move the ladder over a few feet. It’s just that Niall’s never seen vandalism in action, much less this far uptown. _DON’T BE_.

They seem to be working faster, now, the ladder shifting again and the same man scrambles up it, moves his spraycan swiftly along the brick wall. Niall’s trying not to laugh when the paint looks finished, _DON’T BE A DICK !_ standing tall and stark against the brick, thirty stories up and at eye level of every apartment building surrounding it. The man comes down a few steps and his accomplice hands up a new can. The throwup gets tagged with the same smiley face that was outside his car tire this morning. Niall doesn’t quite _get_ it but he’ll leave that to the graffiti experts, he supposes, watches as the men pack up and disappear as quickly as they arrived.

:::

Maybe it’s just because he’s never noticed it before or because there’s never any graffiti that lingers in the upper east side but Niall’s suddenly seeing it everywhere, mostly small, frantic wildstyles or larger tags on the backs of trucks and buses. There’s stickers showing up, too, the most common a drawing of a black and gray stag stuck on nearly every stop sign Niall passes on his way to work.

He googles _NYC graffiti_ a week later during his lunch break and sifts through it all to some underground punk article, ranking the top ten best unknown artists in Manhattan. His stag sticker and smiley face are the same guy, the artist who goes by _Rogue_. He’s number five, followed by a monkey in a space suit sticker, _Zap!_ , at number six.

_Rogue and Zap! are often seen painting in tandem with their larger works--chances are if it’s a full wall, they both had a part in it. At our spot for #5, Rogue is all city, and he specializes in typography with a variety of media. His work often feels personal and direct, demanding the attention of passersby whether they were looking for it or not. Recently, he’s set his sights on the upper east side, a feat no artist has attempted in a few years due to the recent re enforcement of anti-graffiti laws. So far, his only sightings have been his stag stickers, a wheatpaste poster reading “THE REAL ART IS OUT HERE” taken down across from the Met, and the message to “DON’T BE A DICK!” thrown up recently in the middle of one of the district’s high-end residential areas. If Rogue can conquer the upper east side, he will surely prove himself as one of the great kings of New York._

Niall bookmarks the page. On the walk home, he peels one of the stag stickers off a stop sign and sticks it on the back of his phone.

:::

The Upper East Side feels different because it’s so lonely. Louis never had a problem with being a trailblazer but there’s something very solitary about climbing the fire escapes of these apartments, just him and Zayn versus a brick wall and the threat of some yuppie ratting them out to the police. At least mid and downtown have some kind of scene, even if it’s only stickers and tags. Louis’s stag looks abandoned on the stop signs this far north in the city. Zayn laughs when Louis laments for the lack of community up here, teases, “are you feeling lonely at the top, Tommo?” and he's not. It’s just. Sometimes it feels like he’s got more community with other street artists he’s never met and there’s none of that camaraderie in this district. Gremlin who mostly sticks to Brooklyn but has his stencils all over Coney Island, Pop who shares his soda can sticker on almost every stop sign with Louis’s stag, Professor who dominates midtown but also leaves chalk murals in central park. Nobody painting over anyone else’s work or overlapping anyone else’s stickers on fire hydrants and parking signs. But maybe it’s that distance that he’s so in love with, doesn’t know if he’d even _want_ to meet any of these other artists. But he misses their anonymous company, doing these pieces uptown. He loves having Zayn but kind of wishes that the Upper East Side didn’t feel like such a deserted island.

:::

Niall starts leaving extra spraypaint cans on the roof of his building, whites, grays, and blacks because those are the colors the Rogue seems to use most. A six pack of Blue Moon and a few bags of Five Guys burgers and fries, some kind of peace offering, a silent plea _please don’t fuck with my building_ , or maybe _please don’t stop, this place is so fucking boring but it hasn’t been, lately_. Regardless of whatever he wants it to mean, the paint and food is gone every morning.

:::

Niall almost loses his nerve to approach him. It’s the third time this week he’s seen Rogue painting, can’t quite work up the guts to say hi before the hooded figure disappears and Niall doesn’t see him for another few days. And then it's almost ten on a Tuesday night and Niall sees him standing on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to 77th street station, bag of paint cans at his feet. Rogue and Niall are the only things standing still on the whole street. It’s like a game of cat and mouse but Niall isn’t even sure who’s the cat and who’s the mouse in this scenario.

“Hi,” he squeaks softly but the man twitches and turns in one swift movement, finger still hooked on the nozzle of his spraycan. Niall can only make out a pair of blue eyes squinting at him from under the hood and the bandana covering the lower half of his face and there’s something really fucking intimidating about it, not being able to see the other person’s expression. “I’m not a cop,” Niall starts with, doesn’t really know why.

The man’s eyes crinkle and when he tugs the bandana down he’s smiling. He’s handsome. “Cops don’t usually say _hi_ when they’re coming to arrest me,” is all he says, tucks his face back into the bandana and waves a hand that Niall understands to mean _step back_. “Watch my back, yeah?”

Niall leans against the telephone pole. He’s got questions to ask but understands that now isn’t the time or place. Feels it in his bones like this is something special. Not quite sacred but almost.

Niall doesn’t get to watch for long because there’s a black and white car at the light at the end of the block and Niall calls over, “Uhh, dude? There’s a cop--” and doesn't know what to do from there. The hooded man throws his can down into the duffel bag at his feet just as the cop car’s siren and lights flick on, starts to roll through the light and Rogue shouts, “come on, then,” at Niall and what choice does he have but to follow. They sprint towards the cop car and across the intersection just as the car goes through the light, will have to pull a U-turn to get after them. The bandana’s fallen down from the man’s face when he glances over his shoulder and gives Niall a wild smile, dodges them through an alley. Niall follows blindly until they’re ducking into a Starbucks three blocks over, collapsing into one of the tables by the window. The vandal is grinning, tugging his hood back up and resting his chin in his hands.

“You’re the one who's been doing upper east side,” Niall says, still trying to catch his breath, hunched over in his chair with his hands on his knees. The man raises his eyebrows.

“And you know this how?”

Niall takes out his phone, shows him the stag sticker that’s peeling and faded. “I’m the one that leaves the cans out for you. Off of Lexington. At least, I hope it’s you who’s getting them.”

His eyes flick from the stag sticker up to Niall’s face. Even without the bandana his expression is unreadable, only breaks into a smile and holds out a hand when he says, “I’ve never met a fan before. Much less one who will run from the cops with me. I suppose that deserves some kind of recognition.”

Niall feels himself grinning without even meaning to, takes the man’s hand in a firm grip, feels his palm still slick with paint. “Niall.”

The man nods at first, like this is something to consider, doesn’t let go until he says, “Louis,” with an air of finality.

:::

Louis doesn’t see Niall again for another week and a half, broad daylight this time coming out of Blick downtown when he sees Niall coming down 19th. He recognizes him immediately, not exactly a face he could forget, anyway. He chews his lip, could let him round the corner and be done with him.

“Niall,” Louis calls out and the man turns, pushes his sunglasses up on his forehead and breaks into a huge grin. It floods Louis with some weird kind of relief that he catches Niall with a smile.

“Haven’t seen you in a bit,” Niall says, shakes Louis’s hand and it feels proper, this time, no sweat or paint preventing their palms from actually feeling each other. Niall looks pointedly at the art shop Louis has just emerged from, and at the large bucket at his side. “You up to something down here?”

Louis shrugs, shakes the bag in his other hand. “Glaze for our posters, trying to make them waterproof. Had to trade my guy a fuckin eighth of my best bud for this and some new nozzles.” Louis makes a vague gesture back to Niall. He’s dressed sharp, must be on his lunch break from wherever the hell he works, loosened tie over a striped dress shirt. Louis suddenly feels outstandingly underdressed. And he even showered today. “You?’

Niall’s cheeks flush and he stuffs his hands in his pockets, pivots his whole body to the side a bit, gesturing to the restaurant he's just come from. “Business lunch back at McManus’s.”

If Louis’s hands were free, he’d be fidgeting. One o’clock in the afternoon in the middle of the sidewalk and he’s worried that they have nothing in common. He doesn’t know why this is such a goddamn shock to him, because it shouldn’t be.

“I could let you know the next time I’m up by you,” Louis pipes up, shifting on the balls of his feet. “My….Zayn doesn’t like going uptown, cops freak him out. Could use a lookout again.”

Niall’s mouth twitches like he’s not sure Louis is serious but Louis drops his bucket and bag, fishes his phone out of his pocket and gestures for Niall to put his number in. “You can treat us to Five Guys, too, if all goes well,” he jokes and Niall does smile, now, sunglasses falling back down onto his nose as he taps his name and number in. Louis salutes him when he hands the phone back, both of them smiling despite the fact that Louis tries not to. “I’ll keep you in touch. What time do you usually go to bed?”

Niall isn’t taken aback at all, answers smoothly, “I’ll wait up for you,” and winks before stepping to the curb, holding out a hand until a taxi stops. Niall gives a little wave and the car heads off uptown.

:::

 _You got a black hoodie or something ?_ is the text Niall gets at two in the morning a few days later, slumped on the couch watching SportsCenter and he frowns, mentally goes through his closet. He apparently doesn’t answer fast enough, because the next message chimes in,

 _U cant b wearing that jersey u wore last time. Im on ur roof, come on out  
_ and then, quickly, _if ur awake and up for it, i mean_

Niall’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt and jeans already, taps back _omw_ and stumbles into his sneakers on the way out into the hall, climbs the stairs to the door to the roof of the building. He sees the puff of cigarette smoke first and then Louis, shrouded in the shadow of the heating unit. “Heya, Batman.”

Louis snorts, steps out and throws a hoodie at Niall and tugs his bag onto his shoulders. “Nah, Batman’s usually up in the Bronx. He’s got some killer stencils, did a collab with him in Yonkers a few years ago.”

Niall’s laugh is muffled when he tugs the hoodie on, pauses for a moment to bury his face in the shoulder of it. Spraypaint and cigarettes, wasn’t really expecting anything else but there’s still something else under all of that, something that smells sharp and warm.

“You know that 7-Eleven down on 65th?” Louis asks, already moving towards the fire escape and Niall nods, clears his throat before Louis drops over the edge. “Uh, we can use my elevator, if you want.”

Louis makes a face and then mutters, _oh, right_ and ushers for Niall to lead the way back into the building. He looks completely out of place walking through the posh hall of Niall’s floor but doesn’t seem bothered by it so Niall doesn’t say anything, as long as Louis doesn’t whip out a paintbrush and try to put anything on the walls. They’re quiet until they’re through the lobby and out on the street.

Louis has his bandana over his face and his hood up as they get closer to the corner convenience store but they come across three different people on their journey who apparently know Louis-- or, rather, Rogue. Shouted _hey, Ro_ from another hooded man across the street and Louis waves back, keeps his head down. He says _Hey, Skell,_ to a girl at one of the corners and Niall hears her bag clanking metallically with spraycans when she turns quickly to nod at them. Niall feels like he’s walking with a celebrity by the time Louis ducks them into an alley across from the 7-Eleven. He shoves a few bills in Niall’s hand. “Can you get me some Slim Jims?” he asks, crouching behind a dumpster and pulling out a roller, can of paint, and letting the rest of his spray cans roll out onto the pavement. Niall gives a nod, slinks across into the store. When he comes back with a blue raspberry slushie, three SlimJims, and a bag of sunflower seeds, Louis already has a bright pink fill started on the wall.

Being Louis’s lookout is pretty much sitting against the wall and keeping an eye out for anyone who could rat them out and sharing his slushie whenever the painter whines _pretty pleaaaase_. The slushie cup is covered with painty fingerprints by the time Louis collapses onto the ground next to Niall.

“Twenty minutes,” Niall exhales, impressed, and Louis laughs, sucks down the last syrupy remains of their drink.

“Zayn never timed me. I should make him start.”

It’s a six foot tall croquet mallet and ball, _Our love is God. Let’s go get a slushie_ sprawled around it in blue, dripping letters.

“Thanks for coming along,” Louis says, rolls his head over on the brick wall behind him to look at Niall. “Thanks for not calling the cops on me.”

Niall grins, spits out a sunflower seed shell. “Thanks for making my neighborhood a little more colorful.”

:::

When Niall meets Zayn, the man has pink and orange chalk up to his elbows and the kitchen floor of their apartment is covered in something gray and slimey.

“Hey,” Zayn waves from where Niall’s standing at the edge of the doorway, half-smiling. Louis climbs onto one of the nearest chairs, crawls across the tiny table and onto the kitchen counter. He manages to wrestle two beers and a bag of chips from the fridge and cabinet, crawls back to the hall without ever touching the floor. Zayn watches, leaning on the end of his broomstick. He gives the pair a sheepish shrug. “I had a bit of a measurement problem.”

“What are you--” Niall asks, steps into the kitchen and has to catch himself on the edge of the table to keep from sliding on the slick tile.

“Wheatpaste,” Louis chirps, cracks open the beers and sits on the middle of the table. “It’s the first time I’ve trusted it to Zayn and apparently….” he waves a hand at the mess of the kitchen. “James just got a job at one of the FedEx Kinkos downtown so. We’re trying to use it to our advantage.”

Zayn eventually gets shooed away to sit on the table with Niall. Louis takes over, does a half-assed job laying some towels down on the spilled paste and grabs a pitcher from under the sink. There’s three large buckets, one of which is filled to the brim and must have overflowed when Zayn tried mixing it with his broom. Louis sets about methodically opening and distributing the boxes of Teknabond, sprinkles a whole box into the first bucket and plunges the pasting broom in to mix it. Zayn sighs, takes a swig from his beer and drops his head onto Niall’s shoulder, pouting. “He was always better at this than me,” he mutters, tilts his head so he can kind of look up at Niall. “I’m Zayn, by the way.”

Louis has the mixture thickening a few minutes later and Zayn disappears into one of the bedrooms, reemerges with a bundle of large posters under his arm. Niall’s not sure if they genuinely need his help or if they’re just looking for free labor but he doesn’t mind anyway, helps Louis trim the posters of Zayn’s space monkey and Louis’s prints of Shakespeare, captioned _not shakespeare but something similar_. By the end of the night Niall’s sneakers are coated with the gray wallpaper adhesive, has it up to his elbows and a significant amount of papercuts, can feel his hand stinging when he lifts up his water bottle for a sip. There’s maybe thirty or forty posters that Zayn moves back into the bedroom, Niall following close behind carrying two of the wheatpaste buckets.

It’s a two bedroom apartment and this clearly used to be a functioning bedroom but now it looks like a makeshift art studio. The dresser and nightstand are covered with spraycans and spare nozzles, the desk a mess of paint brushes and boxes of Teknabond, buckets of glazes. Zayn lays the posters on the bed and Niall leaves his buckets at the foot of it, stands for a few moments to marvel at the organized chaos of the room.

“It’s not always like this,” Zayn laughs, clearly amused by Niall’s expression, “just when we’re really getting into something good. It’s been like this since Louis decided to take on Upper East.”

“Where do you sleep?” Niall asks but feels like he knows the answer already, and Zayn tells him with a shrug, 

“We share Louis’s bed, usually. Or one of us will take the couch. The dream, obviously, is to get a place with a real office. Or just a third bedroom.” Zayn waggles his eyebrows, flicks the light off and Niall follows him out into the hall. “Unless you’ve got extra storage space you’re willing to sacrifice.”

Niall snorts as they pass the kitchen, newspapers and bath towels still thrown haphazardly onto the spills on the floor. “And have you to make my maid’s life a living hell? I don’t think so.”

Zayn rolls his eyes and mutters “of course you have a maid,” around a cigarette but it’s affectionate, gives Niall a friendly scrub on the scalp before thanking him for all the help with a handshake.

:::

Louis and Zayn take Niall to Alibi as their  final initiation, and Louis spends the whole subway ride there asking if Niall’s ever been in a bar fight, ever been to any dive outside of uptown, ever even been to Brooklyn. The bar is mostly cheap locals and college students, Zayn and Louis’s favorite spot because it’s cash-only and that’s all they ever have, anyway. Louis is kind of expecting (hoping?) that Niall won't like it, still kind of looking for a reason not to like this kid but he hasn’t found one yet. Hypes up Alibi as one last test for Niall and if he doesn’t pass then Louis will be right about all of his preconceived notions about Rich Manhattan Kids.

They get to the dive and Louis and Zayn let Niall go in first. Niall sidles in easily, makes a friendly and swift beeline for the bar and orders them three Blue Moons, like he’s done this with Louis and Zayn already a hundred times. Maybe in a past life.

Zayn slams Louis hard on the back as Niall approaches them with their three drinks, grins into Louis’s ear. “He’s a keeper, Lou, admit it.”

“Yeah,” Louis finally yells back over the din of the bar, reaches out and pulls Niall around the other end of their table to tuck him into his side. “You’re a keeper.”

:::

Niall and Harry hit it off from the start and honestly it’s Louis’s worst nightmare, someone new to fuel Harry’s ego after Louis has spent years trying to break it down. The cafe Harry works at is in the heart of Greenwich Village, a hike for all three of them to make but they always end up there somehow, hanging over the bar ringing the cashier’s bell until Harry brings them breadsticks to shut them up. Louis and Zayn have their own table in the back, carved up from pocketknives and keys and forks, _Harry Loves Zayn_ in a heart and _Louis Loves Nachos_ in another heart. It should feel strange including Niall, now, but he finds his place pretty quickly. Sits quietly for the first few nights until Harry joins them after closing, breaking Niall out of his shell because Harry’s always there now to egg him on. Turns out that Niall swears like a sailor, has a habit of eating his own meal too fast and then salvaging all the scraps from everyone else’s plates later. After two weeks, Louis just starts handing Niall his side of sweet potato fries that come with his usual BLT. Tonight is some kind of Open Mic Night, mostly poetry readings that have prompted Louis and Niall to really have a go at each other’s philosophical sides.

“Fuckin’ hate Bukowski,” Louis mutters as they find their way to their table and Niall doesn’t comment, for a while, plucks an icecube from his glass to chew on.

“Your favorite movie is _Fight Club_ , Louis,” he says tentatively after a while but Louis doesn’t get it, frowns over at Niall. “Yeah, but that’s Chuck Palahniuk, not Bukowski.”

“Not that much of a difference though, is there?” Niall says back around his straw and Louis pauses, now, scoots his chair back so he can lean against the cafe window. “Meaning what?” he asks, tries to keep the bite out of his voice but he can’t quite soften the edges of the question. Offers Niall a curious smirk and Niall takes a breath, doesn’t look Louis in the eye but flaps a dismissive hand in the air.

“Cynical white dudes who are mad at society for being Society,” he says with a shrug. _What makes you any different._ There’s a tension that both of them are trying to steer around, trying to force the conversation to stay light but it still feels heavy. Louis drops it when Harry brings over his sandwich.

 “Let me guess. You’re, like, a _T.S. Eliot type_ ,” Louis sneers but he’s managed to bring his playful facade back, “let us go, then, you and I…”

Niall blushes and throws a french fry at him, lowers his voice as the next reader starts, some poem about his dead bird, “What’s so wrong with Eliot?”

Louis doesn’t seem to have an answer to that, either that or he’s just as enthralled with the dead bird poem as he appears to be. “my guys are just more blunt, is all. I’ve never been about all the…” he makes a vague gesture, scrunches up his face, “subtlety, I guess. If you feel some kind of way, just say it. No need to bring women and Michelangelo into the mix.” It might be the most hypocritical thing Louis has ever said, _if you feel some kind of way, just say it,_ even though every one of his pieces is something vague and cynical. He almost expects Niall to call him out on it. They both know that what Louis just said was bullshit but Niall lets it slide, rolls his eyes and smiles and Louis is grateful for it.

 :::

This is the two of them day drunk in Central Park, Niall with his head on Louis's shoulder thinking about how long he’s lived here and he’s never once wasted an afternoon laying out on the lake like this. There’s a rock by the lake that’s covered in graffiti, lots of _fuck you!_ ’s and _Bill Loves Jessica_ , whatever, small pieces of anyone who had a marker on them at the time. Louis hates jumbled, scribbled places like this, it’s a waste of a good wall. Niall watches in silence when they stop walking. Louis gives his can a few good shakes, sprays _ROGUE_ in big, black letters, covering up a lot of the smaller, faded messages written on the rock’s surface. He gives Niall a grin over his shoulder, tucks the can back into the side pocket of his backpack and Niall squints at the wet paint. “You just painted over _Jeff & Vicky 2005_,” he points out and Louis snorts. Niall doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s serious, can’t believe that Louis just erased a message that’s been there for ten years.

“Would you be pissed if someone went over one of your pieces?” he finally asks and Louis shrugs.

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the difference between that and Jeff and Vicky?”

Louis pauses but his lip doesn’t curl into a snarl like it usually does, just kicks a pebble off the pavement. He turns around, walking backward so he can still face Niall when he answers, “I’ve got more paint, is the difference.”

:::

Louis takes Niall to his piece that’s been up the longest, two years old tucked high and deep into an alley downtown in Tribeca. Something about an ex, _I don’t love you anymore!_ that used to be red and sharp and angry but now it’s turned a little pink, soft around the edges with other, newer tags starting to creep in around it. It feels like an afterthought.

“You think you know everything when you’re eighteen, right,” Louis laughs, pushes a hand through his hair and leaves his fingers knotted there for a moment. Niall smiles softly, silently, bows his head in a shrug. They stand there looking at it until Louis finishes his cigarette, flicks it onto the cement and mutters, “let’s go eat, yeah?”

It’s the first time Niall’s ever seen Louis look embarrassed.

:::

Niall meets the rest of Zayn and Louis’s friends on his first Real Mission to the trainyard. He’s never seen Louis protective and Josh, Nick and Aiden seem friendly enough. But there’s some kind of doubt that the three of them exchange, Nick whispering something that Louis must overhear. “He’s a rook, man, it’s good,” Louis says but the last of it comes out as almost a snarl, crowds a step closer to Niall. There’s some silent exchange between Louis and the other three artists and then the tension evaporates, Louis taking Niall’s wrist in his fingers and tugging him over to the open dufflebag on the pavement.

“Rook?” Niall mutters as Louis crouches into the bag, spray cans rattling when he reaches in.

“Trustworthy,” Louis says back without missing a beat, presses a can into Niall’s palm when he stands back up. “Like, vouching for a part of your crew, yeah? You still gotta be lookout, though.”

Louis turns away before he can see Niall grinning. _Part of your crew_. Louis is one endearing motherfucker, whether he knows it or not.

Louis and Josh finish a whole train car, end to end, Josh with an unreadable green wildstyle and Louis with a large tiger that looks like Zayn’s tattoo, prowling along the metal edge of the car. Niall’s only addition is a small, white message on the door of the car, _take care_ written plainly, just large enough to see amidst the other colors and illustrations. Doesn’t know if his message is for the train or for the other guys here with him tonight. Louis looks like he wants to ask about it but he doesn’t. Just scruffs a hand through Niall’s hair and leaves a streak of orange paint that doesn’t come out for a week.

They finish without any mistakes or getting caught and the other guys seem to be riding on the success of it. Pack up their backpacks and rags and head out back into the city, Niall riding on the pegs of Louis’s bike. It’s late enough that the only sounds down the road of the train yard are the Pokemon cards in Louis’s spokes, the staticky, unfocused noise coming from Zayn’s headphones two bikes ahead of them. Niall’s never known New York, a train yard, or Louis to be this quiet.

:::

 _Suckerpunch_ scrawled hastily across one of the railings on the Brooklyn bridge after the first time Niall questioned Louis’s art, Zayn keeping one hand gently on Louis’s back as he wrote it. Maybe for the comfort or maybe to prevent him from jumping over the fucking railing.

(“Yeah, Lou, I get that, but what are you trying to _say_ , you know?” Niall gestures back towards the wall. _if you go, don’t come back_ in white, loopy letters next to a large painting of wilting flowers. Louis is excited about the painting being done, capping his cans and tugging off his bandana, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“Hmm?” he hums as he walks backwards towards Niall, still admiring the text he’s finished next to Zayn’s flowers from three days ago. Niall places a hand between Louis’s shoulder blades to keep him from tripping backwards over the curb.

“I mean, what does it mean?”

Louis frowns, brushes his hands off on the legs of his jeans. Fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and waves his free hand at the wall. “It’s just like, you know. Don’t fuck people over.”

Niall frowns. Doesn’t know how to tell Louis that it doesn’t come across like that. It comes across like...he doesn’t even know, like something bitter and resentful instead of some kind of advice. “Seems like you hold a lot of grudges,” Niall finally says and Louis tenses under his touch, Niall dropping his hand away from his back.

“You don’t like it, then?” Louis asks after a few beats. Niall’s already shaking his head, kind of knew Louis would react like this, doesn’t speak until Louis looks him in the eye.

“It’s brilliant, it is, it’s just.” Niall shrugs. “Feels like you don’t really know what you’re trying to say.”)

:::

He and Zayn take a massive wall because Zayn’s tired of Louis’s drunk, miserable ass. Slaps him a little too hard on the back that evening, _some fresh fumes will do you good, there’s a clean spot on North 6th_.

Zayn starts right in, tugs his bandana over his face and gets to work and Louis is almost envious, for a second. Tumbles through envy into admiration into guilt, knows that the only reason Zayn hasn’t been out painting recently is because he’s been home making sure that Louis doesn’t, like, die of grief or something. Niall was the first time anyone’s criticized his work and he’s only upset because he knows that Niall was completely, totally right. He knows that Zayn isn’t holding this against him but he still feels guilty about it, wallows for a while as he sits on the sidewalk watching Zayn’s arms move in wide arcs across the brick.

Louis picks up a white can and he catches Zayn’s eyes crinkling, knows that he’s smiling under his bandana and that’s all the encouragement Louis needs, steps forward and starts with a fill. Zayn’s working on some kind of alien piece, all bright greens and blues and blacks. They don’t talk as they work aside from short comments, _might have to go up for this one, you got rope?_ and _can I go over this here_. Louis falls into his old rhythm eventually, ears tuned to the hissing of their cans and the far-off threat of any sirens.

“Looks sick, bro,” Zayn breathes and it breaks Louis out of it for a moment. Zayn’s paused for a smoke break, stepped back to the curb and Louis retreats, too. Fingers smeared with orange and yellow slicking against Zayn’s own purple-stained fingers when he takes Zayn’s cigarette for a drag. _Sorry Mom!_ stretched out in big, bright orange and yellow bubble letters that Zayn worked his mural around, a UFO taking a figure up into its ship. Maybe their best piece yet. It gets buffed out a week later.

:::

Niall’s got blue paint under his fingernail. He notices it in the middle of a board meeting, frowning down so hard at his hands that the secretary next to him asks if he’s okay. He spends the rest of the meeting trying to dislodge it but it looks like it’s stained the skin of his thumb, too. Some part of Louis that he never meant to keep but it’s here regardless. Stubborn and inevitable.

:::

They don’t really make up because it wasn’t really a fight. Louis just dropped off the map for a week or so and Niall gave him the space, left a bucket of that expensive poster glaze on his roof and it was gone in the morning. And, later, a casual text, _what are you doin this weekend ?_

Sunday afternoon is _Let the good times roll_ written on the back of a plastic subway seat on their way over to Citi Field. Niall made Louis promise to not bring any cans with him but he’s still got his Sharpie, leaves a line down the back of Niall’s hand when he tried to stop Louis from writing it. “Haven’t been over here since I was ten, maybe,” Niall says as he snatches the marker from Louis, sticks it behind his ear and rests an arm around the back of Louis’s seat. “Went to Yankees Stadium a few years back, was a little too much for me, though.”

Louis hums, considers wrestling his marker back but decides it’s not worth it. Louis only agreed to go to see if Zayn’s python stencil from six months ago is still there, a block from the stadium one night when they were both drunk and got on the wrong train. (Also, maybe it was Niall’s puppy eyes, whining about having an extra ticket and _come on, Lou, I know you’ve got nothing else to do_.)

“Never been to a game,” Louis mutters, doesn’t know what kind of reaction he’s expecting but Niall just hums. Louis can feel Niall carding his fingers through the short hair at the nape of Louis’s neck, seems like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

“I never really understood the hype of it. We don’t have to stay the whole time,” Niall finally replies with a shrug, “just a few beers and hotdogs, yeah?”

They stay the entire game. Louis gets his marker back during the top of the second, just writes _take me out to the ballgame_ on the back of the seat in front of them but that’s it. Two hotdogs each and they share a cotton candy, pleasantly drunk on the Too Expensive Coors Lights they kept buying until the last call during the seventh. The Mets lose to the Nationals five to two but neither of them are paying attention to the game by the end of it, Louis shouting in Niall’s ear over the crowd, _you can see Jersey from here_. Niall doesn’t know what this is supposed to mean and Louis’s face is carefully blank about it, just waves a hand when he leans back, like it was just an observation.

“Makes you miss home?” Niall asks back and Louis just shakes his head. The distant crack of a bat at homeplate pulls their attention back to the game.

:::

Zayn’s the smoking, cop-dodging self-proclaimed street rat who spends his weekends drawing chalk murals in Washington Square Park. He claims it helps throw the cops from his _Zap!_ alibi but Louis knows that he’s really in it for the kids, trying to recruit future vandals. Leaves open boxes of sidewalk chalk scattered around the pavement when he’s drawing and eventually, some kid bites, adds a badly-drawn dragon or racecar or flowerpatch to Zayn’s intricate murals.

Niall and Louis watch him for a whole afternoon, Louis rolling around the cement on his skateboard and Niall settled into the grass across from the pavilion. Niall’s nose is sunburned by the time Zayn stands up, swipes a hand across his forehead and leaves a chalky purple streak across his face. The pavement is covered in a blue and purple mandala like the tattoo on his hand, a few stray lions and giraffes around the edges, courtesy of seven-year-old Bradley who was eager to help. Niall instagrams it and it rains the next night. His captioned _this is massive !_ is the only proof that the mural ever existed. 

:::

Niall being on lookout has turned into Niall becoming an amateur filmmaker with his phone. His camera roll fills up quickly with photos and videos of Louis and his work. Louis doesn’t quite understand it, and it makes him a little anxious, reminds Niall every single night to not give Louis’s real identity away. Louis and Zayn really only take photos of their best works, posting them to their Rogue and Zap! instagram accounts respectfully with their geotagged location. But Niall’s soon posting photos of it all, Louis caught mid-jump sticking one of his stags on a No Parking sign, Zayn rappelling down a wall with a broom to stick an eleven-foot tall poster of his space monkey print onto the brick. When Louis asks Niall just shrugs, snaps a photo of the awful ghost throwup Louis has just done on an electrical box. “It’s all art, isn’t it?” he asks, tugs his hood up and hurries to catch up with Louis a few paces ahead. “Kinda like watching the process more than seeing the finished product, to be honest.”

Louis kicks a pebble, knows that it’s his decision with the conversation to either drop it or stretch out Niall’s answer. He rests a cigarette between his lips, doesn’t light it until they’re paused at a street corner. “Why’s that.”

Niall’s mouth twitches but he stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs. He’s quiet for nearly half a block but Louis know that they’re not finished talking; Niall’s just trying to find the best way to answer Louis’s question. “The act of doing it is more impressive, I guess. The fact that you’re willing to risk your physical health and safety for some paint or paper on a wall.” He frowns like this isn’t quite the answer he was trying to formulate. “Like, seeing you sweet talk your way out of tickets and arrests and watching Zayn cut his stencils with his XActo without somehow chopping a goddamn finger off.” he shrugs but looks looser now, like he’s hit the stride of what it is he’s trying to say. “It’s a kind of dedication to work that I don’t see every day, you know? I can go stare at a painting or watch a movie or read another fuckin’ legal contract any day. It’s just. Cool to see the passion that’s working behind it, is all.” It feels like there’s not much left to say, after that. Louis tugs Niall closer, tucks him under his shoulder and scrubs his knuckles along his scalp. “Niall Horan, you sound like a goddamn poet.”

:::

“You could sell some of these, you know,” Niall says quietly from the front room and Louis rounds the corner, sees him with a fingertip on the edge of one of the canvases. If he’s being honest with himself he doesn’t even really remember making it. Knows that the mess of doodles and Zayn’s _chillin’_ wildstyle was a product of smoking three bowls and watching _Space Jam_ a few Fridays ago.

“Nah,” Louis shrugs. _Nah_ he doesn’t want to sell it and _nah_ that he would even be able too.

It’s the first time Niall presses him. “Are you sure, man? You should see some of the art my neighbor upstairs has, literally a photograph of a plastic spoon he paid nearly $500 for--”

“I don’t want to, Niall, alright,” Louis snaps, moves to stand in front of the canvas, as if that’ll make Niall forget about it. “I don’t want my shit being sold to the same Wall Street yuppies who pay to get me arrested.”

Niall drops it, then, mutters _I’d buy one_ and then takes a swig of his beer, the end of the conversation.

:::

Growing up in Princeton, the only art Louis was ever exposed to was in local art galleries and his high school’s studio. Maybe a carved up tree in the local park or a small, doodled dick on the underside of the playground slide. The first time Louis goes to New York he’s fifteen and on a field trip, face pressed against the window when they ride parallel with a graffiti-riddled train on I-95. The pieces get progressively bigger the closer they get to the city, whole billboards and abandoned factories covered with posters and paint. Louis was in love before they even made it through the Lincoln Tunnel. He went home feeling like there was something too clean about his hometown, too quaint and plain. His first official vandalism was an awful attempt at a wildstyle at the local skatepark.

His parents buy him a car when he’s seventeen and he starts spending his weekends in the city, meets Zayn at a punk show in the Bronx. Zayn thinks he’s a fucking poser at first and Louis guesses that he looks it, driving a brand new car his parents bought him and en route to apply to Columbia in the fall but parading around Manhattan talking about the punk scene and how much of a rebel he is because he always gets home after curfew.

Louis packs up and leaves right out of high school, gets a job at a hardware store in Brooklyn and moves in with Zayn. Lots of late night stories he’d never tell anyone but Zayn and never during the day. Conversations saved for sitting on the fire escape smoking after the sun had gone down. Didn’t want to end up like his father, wealthy and, by standard means, successful, but had been in a suit and tie desk job his whole life. Louis always thought it was some kind of ego even though his father was miserable, would come home and take it out on his mom or sisters or disappear during the weekends and come home smelling like hard liquor. He tells Zayn all of this, _sounds like a goddamn cliche, i know, I just can’t let myself end up like him, alright. I don’t want the pride and prestige if it’s going to make me fucking miserable_ and Zayn flicks his lighter absent-mindedly a few times, looking out across the city. _Yeah, I get it,_ he’d reply, toss his cigarette butt over the edge of the railing and hug his knees to his chest, _but I think pride can be a problem no matter what your job is, yeah?_ They were still so young. Louis’s tags always getting toyed with or painted over, couldn’t possibly see how pride could be a factor in graffiti, thought it was just a matter of skill and luck, paying your dues to get to the top.

He stands in Central Park now under one of the bridges, looking at one of his own faded pieces from three or four months ago, _BANKSY WISHES HE WAS ME_ with one of his huge black smiley faces wearing a yellow crown. Now, he thinks he understands what Zayn meant.

:::

“At least it’s Payne, this time?” Zayn sighs, his voice dropping the way it does when he knows they’re Royally Fucked. “You could’ve been picked up by one of the real pricks. Winston, or someone.” Louis raps his fist a little too hard against the payphone’s metal frame and he gets a warning look from one of the officers behind the desk. His hands are still covered in red paint, makes it all look much more dramatic than it really was. He was trying to paint a rose on a billboard and couldn’t quite outrun Liam Payne.

“What’s your bail, Tommo,” Zayn finally says, the fight gone from his voice, clearly just wants to get this over with.

“$900.”

“Are you fucking--”

“Defacement of public property, criminal trespassing, reckless endangerment,” Louis drawls, clanging his handcuffs loudly against the metal frame again. He cradles the phone between his ear and shoulder  and turns to Officer Payne, who's leaning against the doorframe behind him. Louis rattles his handcuffs. “These really necessary, Payno? You know I’m not gonna pull any shit.”

“Lou,” Zayn pulls him back over the phone. “$900 is like, next month’s rent.”

“I fucking know.”

There’s a long pause and Payne calls in, “wrap it up, Tomlinson.”

“Listen, I’ll figure something out, okay? Hang tight,” Zayn says after a bit, rustling of papers and the knot in Louis’s chest loosens, a little. Zayn doesn’t tell him to hang tight unless he’s sure he’s got it under control. The only thing Louis can do is be led back to the cell and wait.

There’s five etchings of smiley faces on the cement wall of the holding cell and Louis can remember each time he’s done them. The third time doesn’t exactly count for vandalism because he was arrested for public intoxication but then the police searched his bag and found paint pens and spraycans, anyway. He starts to work on his sixth smiley face, chipping away at the wall with the edge of his keyring. Officer Payne asks him to _please stop defacing the cell_ once but there’s not much heart in his voice. He’s apprehended Louis enough times to know that a simple “please stop” never works and usually he’ll let Louis keep his keys with him just so Louis doesn’t sit on the floor and wail jailbird songs until Zayn comes to get him.

“You’ve made bail, Tomlinson,” Payne tells him less than an hour later, unlocks the cell and lets Louis step out. He takes his time putting the cuffs back on him, doesn’t say anything until Louis is led out into the lobby.

He sees Zayn first, lunges forward into a hug to ask “where’d you get the m--”

He sees Niall standing behind Zayn as he tugs his friend into a hug. Louis's face pulls down into a deep frown and he presses his face into Zayn’s neck for a moment.

“I had to call him, babe,” Zayn mutters into Louis’s hair. “It was him or we’d be out of the apartment next month.”

Louis cups the back of Zayn’s head and nods before they separate and then Louis regards Niall for a few moments. Slinks over with his tail between his legs. “You didn’t have to do this,” he says down to Niall’s shoes. Feels himself burning with a blush and can’t bring himself to look Niall in the face.

Niall’s laugh rings out through the precinct lobby and he steps forward, places a tentative hand on Louis’s shoulder that becomes more confident, solid when it makes contact with his hoodie sleeve. “And do what? Leave you in here?” There’s something sharp prickling out from under his laugh, a tone Louis has never heard from Niall before but it’s clearly a voice that means this is non-negotiable. “I’ve got your back, Lou.”

:::

Louis is back at it the next evening, two blocks away from Niall’s apartment. He’s still considering a fresh wall, the corner of some bank when he hears a distant siren. He doesn’t let it bother him yet, keeps shaking his almost-empty can while he considers his options, the likelihood that it’s a cop car, and the likelihood that he’ll get caught. He sees the car approaching three blocks down at a light. Sprays _ran out of time_ with the ‘e’ dragging along the brick as he makes a run for it, ditches the empty can over his shoulder and somehow manages to pull out his phone.

“Niall,” Louis shouts into the phone, cuts through an alley because the sirens are right behind him, now. “Does your building have a doorman?”

“No, but--are you _running_?”

“Yes. It’s fine. I’ll be in your lobby in like, one minute. Or in jail. Again. I hope you have somewhere we can go for dinner.”

He hangs up with Niall still laughing, dodges past a group of tourists and pushes around the revolving door to Niall’s apartment building. He collapses on one of the chairs, gets the still-wet navy blue paint from his sleeve on the recliner he picks. The elevator dings half a minute later and Niall steps out, putting on his sunglasses and pocketing his wallet. He’s still in his work dress shirt, no tie with the sleeves rolled up. He’s put together in every way that Louis currently isn’t, sprawled in a swanky recliner wearing holey Vans and an old army jacket that’s covered with Who-Knows-What-Kind-Of-Stains. Niall doesn’t bat an eye. “So,” he says upon entering the lobby and Louis is almost expecting a lecture, because if it was Zayn, he’d be getting a lecture. But it’s Niall, and all he says is, “I’m in the mood for Italian.”

:::

Coney Island seems like the only place in New York the two of them have in common, Louis waggling his eyebrows and joking about _I don’t care how rich you are, we can be on the same terms if you’ll split a corn dog with me._ The three of them fuck around on the beach in the afternoon, Zayn building a sand castle with the borrowed toys of the family next to them, Louis dragging a foot to scrawl _Good Vibrations_ in the sand just high enough that the waves won’t get to it for another few hours. It’s the first place Niall has seen Louis and Zayn without any kind of writing utensil ready at the blink of an eye. He lounges on their damp towels and watches the two of them shove each other into the surf, both of them only emerging when they’re sopping wet to pick Niall up, Louis has his ankles and Zayn has his hands, dumping him unceremoniously into the water. The cold shock of the waves make his sunburn feel better, at least.

They walk the boards when the sun shrinks behind smog and clouds, Zayn buying a _Suns Out, Guns Out_ tanktop and shrugging it over his scrawny frame (“what? It’s _ironic”)_ while Louis stays shirtless, hooking a tanned, tattooed arm around Niall’s bright red shoulders. “You don’t get much Vitamin D, then?” he jokes, presses a palm into the burn that tingles and disappears seconds later.

“‘M fuckin’ Irish, Lou.”

“Sure you are, Neil.”

Niall buys them curly fries and Zayn buys them funnel cake, eventually wandering their way into one of the arcades with the last scraps of coins and change leftover from the day. Louis makes a beeline for the Retro corner, attaches himself to Galaga and doesn’t look like he plans on leaving anytime soon.

“He’s had the high score on there since we were sixteen,” Zayn mutters around a fry, “comes back every summer to make sure he’s still on top.”

Niall snorts, totally isn’t surprised, leaves Louis to it then, and challenges Zayn to a few rounds of skeeball.

It turns out that Zayn is a fucking skeeball champ, rolls every ball into at least the forty or fifty point ring, with an impressive amount sinking into the hundred point corner rings. He never even puts down his cup of curly fries. He lets Niall win during their fourth round and Niall appreciates it.

They walk by Louis on their way to the ticket counter, Zayn headbutts Louis in the shoulder gently and gets an incoherent grunt in reply, Louis’s thumb a blur against the trigger button.

“He’ll be a while, then,” Zayn grins, leads the way to the front of the arcade.

They’re in line behind a few kids taking forever, as kids do, to pick out their 1,000 points worth of cheap prizes. “So,” Zayn starts slowly, poking at their own skeeball tickets sprouting out of the empty fry cup, “Louis told me you wanted him to sell his work, maybe.”

Niall freezes, feels like he’s been caught red handed but Zayn just looks over steadily at him. “I know it probably felt like it was personal, him saying no. Trust me, that’s one of his talents. Makes it feel personal when it really isn’t. It’s just, like. A pride thing.”

Niall’s trying to follow, turns his attention to the array of neon signs and “big ticket” prizes in front of them. A toaster for 50,000 tickets. Zayn continues, quiet and unchanging. “He doesn’t want to sell out, like other guys have done. Banksy, Fairey, Guetta, whoever.” Zayn’s quiet for a while and they listen to the kids in front of them try to do the math to pool their tickets and get a lighter without their mom knowing. “And like, the crew we’ve always been with has kind of just been Yes Men for him. He’s never had anyone criticize him, or if he has he’s just fought them.” Zayn rubs a hand over his head, sweeps off a patch of sand behind his ear and shrugs. “I’m just saying. You’re the first one who’s been able to come along and tame the beast, as it were. He takes everything you tell him to heart.”

“Is that….bad?” Niall asks, pinching his lip between his fingers as the kids scamper off and Zayn steps up to the counter.

Zayn shrugs again, leans against the glass counter and hands the girl his cup of tickets. “Not at all. I think it’s good for him, he’s just trying to figure you out. Figure himself out around you. I just wanted to let you know that he really respects you, cares about what you have to say. I’m just saying, like, don’t let his whole...Louis-ness get to you. He’s all bark and no bite, yeah?”

Niall’s chest feels warm, smiles down through the glass at a box of plastic frogs. The girl comes back with their ticket count. “368,” she tells them.

They leave with a little bag full of prizes, sticky hands and fingertraps and a yoyo that Zayn breaks ten minutes after they leave the arcade. The only thing Louis leaves behind is _LWT_ on the Galaga screen, his new high score of 420,000 secure for another summer.

:::

Niall goes out with Louis and his other artists again the next weekend that it’s a nice night, this time tasked with helping Louis cover a wall with a twenty foot poster, _IF WE NEVER SPEAK AGAIN, ASSUME I BECAME FAMOUS_.

“We’re going down from the top,” Louis tells him before pulling on his bandana and hood, already starting up the fire escape. Niall doesn’t really know what he means but he watches Louis, anyway. It’s Louis, Nick, Zayn and Aiden at the top of the building and Niall and Josh on the ground with the supplies. Louis lowers a rope and Niall does as he was told, ties it to the handle of the bucket of wheatpaste, Louis pulling it back up to the roof as Zayn and Aiden start unrolling the posters.

It’s a rush to watch, Louis rappelling down the side of the wall with Zayn holding his rope and Nick coming down next to him. The piece goes up on two papers, Louis with _IF WE NEVER /ASSUME I_ _BEC_ and Nick’s poster has the rest of it. The two of them work fast, Louis smearing the paste down the whole wall with his janitor’s broom and then putting his poster in place, goes over it again with the paste and hands the bucket and broom off to Nick, who has to line his poster up with the second half. The whole thing is up and pasted in under ten minutes.

“Cool,” Niall laughs and Josh rolls his eyes but grins back, mutters, “fuckin’ rookie” and hands Niall a can of silver paint. “Go watch for the cops at the corner, vandalize something while I get them down.”

Niall casts a look over his shoulder at the giant poster, bold black letters on white with Louis’s smiley face and crown in the bottom corner. It’s almost too imposing.

Niall leaves _be good_ on the sidewalk outside of the fence they climbed to get into the building’s courtyard.

:::

There’s an extra paint pen in his briefcase Monday morning, Niall can hear it rattling around when he walks into work. It feels like he’s breaking some kind of unspoken rule, bringing his and Louis’s life into his business life. It doesn’t sit well with him all day, by lunch he’s taken the pen out and is tapping it mercilessly against the edge of his glass desk. Wants to scribble all over the surface, just so he can’t look through the desk and see his shoes underneath, hating how transparent his whole office suddenly feels. He wonders if this is how Louis feels all the time.

:::

Niall’s fingers ghost over a three day old bruise on Louis’s hip. Zayn had dropped the rope holding him up off the edge of the building they were working on, panicked about the cops and Louis had hit the ground hard, adrenaline preventing him from even feeling it until the next morning.

Louis doesn’t say anything about how tender the skin is but he flinches anyway and Niall seems to understand, moves his palm to his uninjured side instead.

“How come all of your work is always so big?” Niall whispers against Louis’s ribcage. “Whatever you had to say, I’m sure it would mean just as much if you didn’t have to scale a building to say it.”

Louis huffs a silent laugh and Niall’s head bobs up and down with the movement of Louis’s torso, moves his fingers up to settle on the soft side of his stomach, between the bottom of his ribs and his hips. He digs a finger in enough for Louis to twitch. “I’m serious.”

Louis huffs a sigh and reaches down, cards his paint-coated fingers through Niall’s hair. “It wouldn’t though,” he says finally. “If it’s not worth saying big, it’s not worth saying at all.”

Niall considers this for a while. Thinks about, _take care_ and _be good_ and _Jeff & Vicky 2005_. “Why’s that?”

Louis sighs again and Niall doesn’t know if it’s a sound of irritation or exasperation, can’t be bothered to pick up his head and look at Louis’s expression. “‘S like love or something, you know? It’s gotta be grand. Something people want to see.”

Niall frowns. “I don’t think so,” he whispers and Louis hums and Niall feels the tremor of it through his cheekbone, his jaw. Niall wants to say _this right now feels like love_ but doesn’t. It’s probably too quiet to be love for Louis.

(Louis does a small piece in Central Park just for Niall, a black and gold and white _no guts no glory_ swirling on the edge of the Gapstow Bridge that only takes him about fifteen minutes. Niall tells him it’s the best piece he’s seen Louis ever do, and Louis can’t tell if Niall is joking or not.)

:::

The four of them kind of high and kind of drunk in Louis’s apartment, Niall and Harry both allowed to them paint. It’s a big canvas, Zayn scooting the couch backwards so they have more room to work, Louis chewing on the end of a paintbrush as he stands on the coffee table, looking down.

“You want to do something together?” he asks and Zayn rubs his eyes and nods, crouches down and starts uncapping the paints. Niall feels like he’s witnessing something not many people have seen, the way Louis jumps down and places a hand on the top of Zayn’s head, still staring hard at the canvas.

Zayn starts humming and Louis breaks into a grin, picks up humming and Niall knows the song from somewhere, can’t name it until Zayn sings _ain’t I pretty, it’s my city_. That song from Newsies.

Harry tucks himself sleepily into Niall’s side and the two of them stay put on the couch, sharing a bag of Cheetos. They get one swift warning from Zayn to not move until they’re finished, but from how Harry’s positioned himself in Niall’s lap, Niall doubts they had any plans to move anytime soon, anyway.  Louis starts with a pencil which is strange to see. Niall doesn’t think he’s ever seen Louis writing or drawing with an actual writing utensil, his eyes following Louis’s sweeping motions over the canvas, laying something out.

“You ever watch them work together?” Harry murmurs, tipping his head up and Niall feels his lips brush his jaw. Niall shakes his head and Harry lets out a satisfied sigh. “It’s beautiful.”

Niall and Harry are mellowed out by the time Zayn and Louis start on the paint but the two artists are singing loudly, Zayn’s got a smudge of yellow on his cheekbone and Louis is standing at the top of the canvas with his arms spread wide, back arched singing, _aaaaaaand if I can make there, Im gonna make it anywhere, it’s up to you, New York, New York_! and Zayn supplies the _bum bum bumbabum, bum bum babum_ ’s as he sweeps baby blue across the canvas.

Niall starts to see it come together, Louis finishing the fills and outlines of the text and Zayn following right after with the artwork. The whole canvas becomes an old school postcard, _Greetings from New York City_ taking up most of the space and Louis swirls his signature cursive in red underneath, _ain’t I pretty_. He eventually circles back around to help Zayn fill in the skyscrapers. There’s a few stray handprints and finger smudges around the edges, something about it makes it feel like Zayn and Louis could have made it crisp and clean, if they wanted to. Instead it’s a little scruffed up, Zayn paints his space monkey head on the Statue of Liberty and Louis paints a silver middle finger instead of the Empire State Building. They both tag it in a corner, prop it up against the bookshelf to dry and it leaves an orange line across the plastic frame of the television. Harry’s asleep on Niall’s shoulder by the time Zayn and Louis cram themselves onto the couch.

“It’s fucking incredible,” Niall breathes, doesn’t want to speak too loud and break the trance that he’s been in for the last few hours. Zayn laughs, loud and bright, and Louis grabs Niall’s chin in his hand, leaves blue paint smudged all down his jaw and kisses Niall hard on the cheek.

:::

It’s not a _date_ but Zayn’s not here and Niall wanted to go to a bar where other graffiti artists hang out, and how could Louis say no to those eyes. They’re in the Bronx, tonight.

There’s a group of four or five guys at the bar who have been shooting Louis glances all night but Louis rotates himself and Niall so their backs are to them, “don’t bother with them,” Louis says, head tipped down to say it loud enough that Niall hears. His mouth catches the shell of Niall’s ear and Niall immediately blushes, shrugs like _wasn’t gonna_ and takes a sip of his drink. It’s the only crew in the whole city that Louis doesn’t get along with, Bluez and Jack. There’s something uneasy stirring in Louis’s gut, hasn’t been to this bar since Jack deliberately went over Louis’s mermaid mural outside the Bronx Zoo a few months ago with a giant dick. Louis wouldn’t have been upset except it was so fucking immature, these kids out here trying to topple him, trying to get under his skin. If Zayn was here he knows that they wouldn’t be trying any shit.

“Louis,” Niall brings him back, loops an arm around the back of Louis’s chair and pulls his attention away from the kids at the bar. “You _said_ ignore them, right.”

Louis rolls his eyes, mutters back _right_ and steals a swig from Niall’s drink, pops a peanut in his mouth. Niall’s grinning like it’s funny and Louis narrows his eyes back, “you’re buying tonight, right.”

“Course,” Niall replies instinctually and Louis hums. “How can I repay you?”

Niall’s neck turns pink again but he just lifts a shoulder. Louis knows he’s about to make some excuse, _you don’t have to, my treat_ or whatever. He leans close to the side of Niall’s face again, “Can I repay you later, then? Don’t have any cash on me.”

Niall snorts into his glass, rolls his eyes and turns to look Louis in the eye bravely. “You _never_ have any cash.”

Louis opens his mouth and tilts his head to the side, considering. “I never said I’d repay you in cash.”

Niall’s fighting a smile and Louis wants to kiss him so fucking bad. If it wasn’t for the eyes he can feel burning into the back of his neck. Niall must be able to tell that Louis is tense because he moves his hand from the back of Louis’s chair to the nape of his neck. It’s not intimate but it might as well be, Louis craning his head down into the touch and then, from the bar,

“He’s a pretty one, Tomlinson.”

Louis goes rigid so fast that Niall’s hand slips away from his neck, shrinks down in his seat a little. “Lou, _ignore them--”_ Niall tries, almost a plea, but two of the guys are already coming closer, followed by their friends.

Jack and Bluez slide into the empty seats across from Niall and Louis, planting their elbows on the table like they’re ready to have a conversation. “You know what he’s going to do with you, right?” Bluez jeers to Louis, pointing scandalously at Niall, blocking that side of his face with a palm as if Niall won’t be able to hear him. “Happened before not too long ago, didn’t it.”

Louis’s jaw feels like it’s been locked shut, can’t even defend himself or Niall because Jack’s already setting up for a story, turning to Niall. Louis can feel Niall looking at him. “You see, Rich, can I call you Rich? Louis here has a habit of chasing pretty rich kids like you, and _you’re_ the type to let him play for a while and then dump his ass back on the street a few weeks later.” He gives a mock sympathetic look to Louis. “It’s hard having expensive taste, isn’t it babe? And this one looks like he’s about ready to up and run right about now. Lou, this one is going to break your heart. And then you’re going to put up some shitty mural about it.”

Niall’s gone as still as Louis but it’s because he’s scared, Louis can feel his eyes desperately looking at him. But Louis knows, _knows_ that if he moves a muscle, someone is going to end up with a broken nose, and he doesn’t want Niall to see him like that, violent.

And then Jack smiles cruelly, reaches out. Says, “It’s always the pretty ones who end up being the worst people you ever meet, isn't it?” and tries to cup Niall’s chin in his hand.

Several things happen at once. Louis is out of his chair, launching himself across the table and gets a handful of Jack’s shirt, Niall’s yelling at the top of his voice but it’s drowned out by their crew shouting, every one of them trying to get their fists at Louis. But Louis fights fucking dirty, cracks a bottle over one of their shoulders and lands a solid punch to Bluez’s nose and he staggers backward, Louis free for enough time that he can grab Jack by the shoulders, slams him up against the wall. He gets another couple punches in before one of their other goonies intervenes, drags him away.

They beat the shit out of him. The whole fight lasts maybe three minutes but it was Louis against four others, he’s only saved when the bartender calls the cops and Niall has to hold Louis tight against his chest to keep him from chasing the crew of kids down the street once they’re outside. It doesn’t stop Louis from screaming after them, _Don’t you fucking dare come near me again, I’ll make you wish you’d never come to New York, this is my fucking city, this is my fucking boy, don’t ever fucking touch him again,_ becomes a steady stream of just curse words after a few more shouts and all Niall can do is hold him back.

The only thing that shuts him up is the wail of approaching sirens and Niall gives Louis’s sleeve a firm tug, “we gotta fucking go, Lou, I can’t afford to pay your bail again, fucking _come on_.” It’s only after he manages to catch Louis’s eyes, still wide and wild that he gets him to follow, taking a few alley shortcuts until they’re a safe distance away from the bar. Louis prowls and paces while they wait for the cops to drive past their alley and Niall grabs him by the shoulders, “Louis, you have to fucking _calm down_. You can go spray their fucking cars and shit _tomorrow_ , but tonight you’re done. You gotta chill.”

“No, Niall!” Louis spits, stops pacing long enough to look at Niall. “They can come for me all they want, they had _no right_ to say all that shit they said about you--”

“--But none of that was true! None of that was true, Louis. I don’t care if you’ve been fucked over by rich idiots before because I’m not going to do that to you, okay? Fucking swear on my life, I would never. _Could_ never.”

It’s the first time Louis is still in the last hour, squinting across the dark alley at Niall. Takes one, two, three steps and kisses him so fucking hard, tastes sharp like blood and the heat of cement, fists, bruises, can’t believe he just got in a bar fight over this bottle blonde rich kid. “I’m gonna get us a cab,” Niall mutters against his mouth when they separate, takes a few steps out towards the sidewalk and holds out an open palm at Louis, like he’s some kind of caged animal. Probably looks that way, at least. “Are you alright now? Chill?”

Louis exhales shakily, feels the last bit of fight leave his body. His cheekbone aches. He nods.

“We’re going back to my place,” Niall tells him as he helps Louis into the taxi, tells the driver his address loudly over Louis’s noises of protest. “ _Why_?”

“Because I know for a fact that your icemaker doesn’t even work,” Niall snaps back, “So I doubt you have any kind of first aid.”

Louis is quiet after that, shrinks into Niall’s side and it’s a fifteen minute ride in silence until they get to Niall’s building. He’s burning with a blush over the kiss, starts fidgeting when he licks his lips and still tastes Niall’s Guinness on them. Niall must pick up on his restlessness, reaches a hand over and rests it on the back of Louis’s neck. Scritches his fingernails through the short hair there and pulls Louis’s head over, kisses his temple. It’s enough to make Louis stop squirming.

Louis’s cheek has stopped bleeding but his lip still is and his eye is starting to swell shut, keeps an arm around Niall as they go up to his floor. The fluorescent light of the kitchen make his injuries look worse, Niall has him sit on the kitchen counter, feels like he’s in a hospital waiting to be patched up. Niall rummages through his freezer and emerges with an icepack, places it in Louis’s hand before he disappears down the hall for a bit.

Louis is restless almost as soon as Niall’s out of sight, hops down from the counter and moves from the kitchen into the living room, ice pack held to his face. Niall’s apartment feels very... _not him_ , too silver and sleek and everything Louis hates about this part of New York. He’s running a finger along the edge of one of the shelves next to the TV, a framed photo of Sinatra’s mugshot and a photo of Niall and a man, probably his dad, out on a golf course. Louis is careful to not get blood anywhere, the only kind of mark he absolutely doesn’t want to leave in here.

“Lou,” Niall calls from the kitchen and Louis sidles back in, hovers by the doorframe until Niall gestures dramatically for him to come sit back on the counter.

“You gonna stitch me up, doc?” Lou teases gently, climbs back onto the counter and watches Niall douse a cotton pad with peroxide. Louis frowns but it doesn’t perturb Niall, the younger man reaching up and cupping Louis’s chin with his free hand.

“This might sting,” is all Niall replies with, scrunches up his nose like he’s about to feel the pain himself. He pats gently at the cut on Louis’s eyebrow, then the second one on his cheekbone to clean the blood away.

“I think….you’re going to live,” he whispers dramatically as he picks up a little tube of Neosporin and Louis sighs loudly, “what would I do without you.”

It makes Niall pause and Louis worries that he’s taken it a step too far. And then Niall gives him a tiny smile, voice turning thoughtful as he dabs the cream onto Louis’s wounds, “hmm, let’s see. You’d be in jail, probably have a broken nose, wouldn’t have gotten any free Five Guys meals…”

“I ever tell you that you’re real humble, Horan?” Louis teases and Niall just hums, unwraps a few butterfly bandages. “Hold still.”

And maybe the realest miracle of the night is that Louis does, doesn’t move a muscle as Niall’s careful fingers stick the bandages onto his eyebrow, presses a larger bandaid onto his knuckles.

“Can’t really do anything about the lip, I’m afraid,” Niall says a few seconds later and Louis lets himself breathe again, takes the icepack away from his mouth and touches his tongue experimentally against the cut. He feels hyperaware of Niall watching him, still a few inches away from Louis’s face, still holding a bandaid.

“Shame,” Louis says, voice dropping lower, “That’s the one that hurts the most.”

The corner of Niall’s mouth ticks up but he moves away before Louis can tip his head forward to meet his mouth. He grabs a fresh few icecubes in a paper towel and presses it to Louis’s lip gently until Louis’s hand comes up to cover his, brushes his thumb over the back of Niall’s hand before taking the ice in his own palm. “Can I kiss you for real this time,” Louis mutters before he can help himself, already reaching a hand up to cup the side of Niall’s face. He catches a glimpse of his own bloodied knuckles, switches hands and rests the uninjured hand against Niall’s jaw instead.

Niall smiles, ducks his head in a nod and then leans in to kiss Louis before he can beat him to it. It’s everything the first kiss wasn’t and Louis wishes he had waited until now. Niall’s mouth is softer, now, easier to open into. Warm and exactly like Louis knew Niall would kiss and he lets Niall lead him into it. Louis’s kiss earlier felt too harsh, hot with a sharp edge and he doesn’t want this to turn into that. Niall seems to understand this, to some extent, mindful of the cut on Louis’s lip. They only pull apart because Louis winces and Niall pulls back immediately, murmurs a _sorry_ but looks like he wants to keep kissing. Louis almost chases his mouth, tips forward but Niall is already moving back, smirks and tells him that his lip has started bleeding again.

Niall watches him for a few more long seconds before he goes into the fridge again, hands a Snapple to Louis. “You can stay here, if you want,” Niall says after a beat, still moving around the kitchen for a bag of popcorn and to clean up the first aid kit.

Louis wants to make some joke but he can’t, partly because of the pain in his face and partly because he doesn’t want to push it. Feels out of his element for the first time in a long time until Niall looks over at him. “You had my back tonight, so. No need to repay me, I guess. We’re even?”

Louis smiles as best he can around his cut lip, gives a little nod and Niall grins, waves a hand into the living room. “You have first pick for the movie, then.”

They watch _Alien_ , well most of it. They spend the first half of the movie scrolling through Louis’s instagram. He shows Niall Jack and Bluez’s instagrams, rants himself breathless about how they’re punk-ass kids, have no respect for other artists, nothing but wannabes and posers and Niall just lets him go off about it. It’s theraputic enough that he finally runs out of nasty things to say, apparently convinced himself again that Jack and Bluez are no longer worth his time. Louis falling asleep somewhere between Ridley’s first encounter with the alien and the ending and Niall only nudges him awake when the credits are rolling. “Lou, you want to take my bed? I can stay out--” but Louis just grumbles, hooks his arms around Niall’s neck and pouts sleepily up at him. “Urroom,” he grunts and Niall barks a laugh loud enough that it shakes Louis awake a little more.

“If you think I’m carrying your bloody ass into my room you’ve got another thing coming,” Niall tells him as he stands up. Louis stands up too. Niall doesn’t exactly carry him but Louis leans so hard on him that he ends up getting mostly dragged into the bedroom, anyway.

Niall’s room is the most colorful room in the apartment thus far but Louis doesn’t really have time to admire it before he’s collapsing on the bed, immediately pulling every blanket and pillow within reach to his chest, curling into himself. There’s a poster for _Scarface_ on the wall adjacent to the bed, a Stanford pennant and golf trophy on the dresser. He listens to Niall move around the room, lets his eyes droop shut until he feels the bed shift. “We’re even,” he says a little more coherently over his shoulder to Niall, who’s toeing off his shoes and crawling onto the mattress. Louis can practically hear the eyeroll in his voice, “Glad to hear it, Lou.” The last thing Louis registers is Niall’s torso pressed up against his back, Niall’s hand tentatively resting on Louis’s hip, and then he’s asleep.

  
Louis leaves as Niall’s getting ready for work, shouts into the bathroom that he’s leaving, thank you again, see you soon if Zayn doesn’t kill him. The only thing Louis leaves behind in Niall’s spotless apartment the next morning is one of his stickers, the black and white stag stuck next to the handle of Niall’s otherwise blank, stainless steel fridge.

:::

This is Niall and Louis drunk in some dive in Jersey City, the wood and whiskey of the bar making Louis look golden leaning against it. Niall’s feeling sated and sleepy after their basket of onion rings and two beers with some somber Lorde song in the background but Louis is still firing on all cylinders, keeps jostling the people behind them. He’s talking about some long weekend spent in Detroit, how much easier it was to scale the buildings there but everyone’s always toying with everyone else’s art, something about how there’s only a few kings in the whole city, Niall’s not listening anymore. Caught on something about Louis’s mouth, but not what he’s saying. He’s not even sure that Louis knows what he’s saying.

They make out on the train ride home. Louis’s lips searching for Niall’s tentatively in the dim, sporadic light going through the downtown Hudson tubes in their empty train car. He finds his chin first and then his mouth. Tastes like some generic single malt beer and bar peanuts and it’s a warm surprise, Niall almost expected him to taste acidic and metallic like his paints. Niall lets out a small gasp when Louis bites down gently on his lip and it’s like nothing Louis knows how to describe, couldn’t even paint it if he tried. The middle of the night kind of falling in love.

:::

He tries it in stages, can’t decide which one Niall would prefer. It’s the first time he’s been genuinely nervous to do a piece, feels fucking ridiculous about it. Has scaled billboards outside of police precincts, been introduced to legendary kings of LA and NYC, shoplifted $40 buckets of paints and glazes, and he’s nervous about one painting. It’s just, this is the first time he’s going to say something that could be permanent. It’s easy to say shit when it can be painted over or taken down, but this feels different. He doesn’t want it to end up like that two year old piece in Tribeca. It’s consumed his blackbook lately, sketches varying from small sharpie messages to an entire traincar, a whole bridge, a whole billboard.

In the end, he decides to wing it.

He does three pieces in one night, the first one just plain not good enough and the second one sparking some kind of apprehensive restlessness, thinks why the fuck not do a third. The first _I Love You!_ tucked on the side of a traincar headed into Jersey, doubts Niall will ever seen it but he hopes that someone somewhere sees it at the right place and time. The second _I Love You_ is a massive wall near Battery Park, colorful, bold, the type of graffiti that tourists like. The type of graffiti that won’t get buffed out because the cops are fucking hypocrites and will leave shit up only if it’s bright and friendly. Louis decides he doesn’t like it as soon as it’s finished.

The last one is the easiest, a bikeride over to the docks on the lower east side. Sprays it stark, black, straight and as neat as possible onto one of the docks overlooking the East River. He’s sure there’s something symbolic that Niall will appreciate, maybe, the border between their Brooklyn and Manhattan lives, rivers are romantic, right, he’ll figure something out.

:::

“Can I show you something?” Louis asks back to Niall. He’s riding Louis’s pegs again as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge, hands securely planted on Louis’s shoulders and it’s been enough to keep him here on the ground, prevent him from trembling to pieces because of his nerves.

“Lead the way,” Niall yells over the wind and Louis can hear his smile.

Louis rolls them up to the docks and he can see the black letters from the parking lot, leads the way but stops short just before the slip in the docks, gestures for Niall to look up ahead. The dock is wet but it makes the _I Love You_ look softer, the black paint bleeding into the wet wood a little, doesn’t seem as severe or desperate as it was the first night. Louis chews his thumbnail to the quick as he watches Niall step forward, stares down at the paint on the dock. He looks up after a few seconds, not really much to see and Louis’s heart jumps into his throat, wants to blabber, _there’s two more if this one isn’t good enough, stayed up planning this for weeks_ ,

“You did this?” Niall asks with raised brows, cutting Louis’s trainwreck of thoughts short. “You didn’t tag it.”

Louis shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. Niall lets out a noise that’s something like a laugh and something like a hum of disbelief, maybe. “Can you say it, though?” he finally asks and, fuck, that’s not at all what Louis was expecting. He stares dumbstruck at Niall, who repeats himself. “I mean, I appreciate it and all, Lou. But can you say it to my face?”

It’s not condescending or accusatory but Louis recoils as if it is, has to close his eyes and exhale for a moment. Remind himself that this is true, has been for a long time, just never had the guts to say it. _No guts no glory_ flashes through his mind and he thinks that maybe he used that saying in the wrong context, should have used it here. “I love you, Niall,” he says, opens his eyes and feels a pang in his chest, that was easier than he ever thought it would be, what was holding him back so long, he says it again, “I love you,” easier than spending hours in the dark painting and running from cops.

Niall grins, laughing when he says, “there you go,” and pulls Louis into a hug. Louis hugs him back tighter. The easiest feeling on earth.

They wander around the docks until the sun starts to set. Niall doesn’t say _I love you too,_ not immediately, but maybe that’s because Louis has known that Niall’s loved him for a while. He feels it when Niall reaches over, twines his fingers through Louis’s and bumps their hips together. Niall’s told Louis he loves him with every spraycan and beer he’s left on his rooftop for him. And maybe Louis has been telling him for a while, too, every streak of paint or chalk he leaves on Niall’s face his own way of telling him and Niall’s always replied by letting the smudges stay, never scrubs them off intentionally. Louis doesn’t find himself waiting for Niall to say it back because he doesn’t doubt Niall. Never has for a second.

(Louis doesn’t notice until that night, doesn’t have a clue when Niall wrote it but he’s sure it was Niall, the silver paint pen that’s become his signature marker shining against the black metal of his bicycle. _I love you too_ written on the handlebar of the bike’s frame. Louis rides home with no hands, doesn’t want to smudge it, just keeps a few fingers resting over the words.)

:::

It doesn’t change anything about them. Maybe that’s the weirdest part but also the most comforting, the _love you’s_ and goodbye kisses just something new to enjoy but they’re still the same people. Which is...interesting to Louis. He expected falling in love to be some kind of big deal, something the whole world would be able to look at and just _know_ but it’s not. Niall still comes out to watch and record Louis painting and Louis is still bitter about Wall Street and Rich People, but his work changes, a little bit. Doesn’t take himself so seriously anymore, maybe. He lets Niall sell two of his pieces to coworkers, swears that he’s going to tuck the money away for future bail funds but they both know he’s going to spend it on slushies and cigarettes and new spraycans within a month.

:::

 _Louis loves Niall_ written on a steel column in the subway station at 51st street. Maybe the smallest, simplest vandalism Louis has ever done but it hangs in his chest while they wait for their train, pretends he doesn’t see Niall grinning at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Take a picture, why don’t you, it’ll last--” Louis starts to sneer but Niall’s already got his phone out, snaps a photo of Louis’s face and then turns and takes a picture of the message on the metal. Louis hooks him into a headlock, tugs him into the subway car when it arrives.

:::

This is Louis waiting on the sidewalk across from Niall’s apartment, hands jammed in his pockets. He feels light, no sharpies or stickers or paint in his pockets. Just a cigarette and his phone, waiting for Niall to come out. Louis watches him come outside, jogs across the street and comes to a halt just in front of Louis, tilts his head up to look at him standing on the curb, a few inches taller than Niall. His lips quirk up. “Hey.”

Louis breaks into a grin, leans forward and drapes his arms over Niall’s shoulders. “Hey. What do you want to do tonight?”

Niall hums, reaches out and rests a hand on Louis’s hip. Louis closes his eyes for a moment. Can’t believe this is his life. “Was thinking we could just go for a walk,” Niall says finally when Louis opens his eyes.

“No money?”

“Nope,” Niall replies.

“No vandalism?”

“I mean. Preferably, no.”

Niall tightens his grip on Louis’s waist as he steps up onto the curb, a silent _love you_ before he lets go, shoves his hands in his pockets. Louis leans forward, kisses him gently. Bites down on his lower lip as a silent _love you too_ in reply. He leans back, waves a hand down the street. “Lead the way, then.”

They start walking, only making it half a block before Niall’s hand swings over to Louis’s, joins his paint-stained fingers carefully in his own. Louis feels like there’s more to be said but that’s alright because he’s still figuring out how to say it, and in the meantime he’s got Niall’s laughter filling the space around them in the hazy evening light. It’s the first time he’s ever walked through New York City at night feeling like he’s got all the time in the world.

:::

**Author's Note:**

> for reference,  
> Louis's art style: [x](http://41.media.tumblr.com/b3561b254a0d3988210d0de50bf65238/tumblr_nncff7vO9E1qd2lhfo1_400.jpg), [x](http://www.ilovemega.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/massive-wheatpaste1.jpg), [x](http://36.media.tumblr.com/555fc076c9e74cef90d4b519cd841984/tumblr_mwqo9nvjnN1rw2a2vo1_500.jpg)  
> and Zayns: [x](http://40.media.tumblr.com/300fb5240d434be3c543e92ffeb59d96/tumblr_n48x9morW81rowadjo1_400.jpg), [x](http://41.media.tumblr.com/457647135a1306ebdd06d5dfeb5a883c/tumblr_mf3s7r9B1N1rw2a2vo1_1280.jpg), [x](https://m2.behance.net/rendition/pm/2070640/disp/2c418d48a8fb34fbb41cd15a92ba9878.jpg)
> 
> inspo tag for this fic & my tumblr are [here](http://foxesmouth.tumblr.com/tagged/ffc).


End file.
